Friday, December 2, 2011

Over the past few years, Grindcore had been a genre of segments: on one hand, we had the purist Grindcore inspired by it's roots: Rotten Sound, Magrudergrind, Wormrot and others were doing it they way Napalm Death used to do it back in 1989. On the other, we had the progressive elements of the genre, toying with dissonance, technicality and time signatures: Discordance Axis, Pig Destroyer, Fuck The Facts. It has become a shit tossing war of fanboy attrition, as the two sides bicker over where the genre needs to go from here.

That question has been answered with Subvert the Dominate Paradigm and Tyranny of Decay: they will be smashed, molded and melted into one. Both of these albums represent the future of Grindcore, one grounded in the genre's past while at the same time embracing it's future. New Mexico's Noisear and New York's Defeatist have both released incredibly impressive albums, mixing the purist, crusty Grindcore of Rotten Sound with the hyper technical and dissonant guitar work of Discordance Axis to create a new kind of Grindcore. And boy does it fucking rule.

Of the two albums, Subvert the Dominate Paradigm is the stronger record. In fact, Subvert the Dominate Paradigm might be the finest Grindcore album of the last five years. Each of the thirty songs(minus the last song, "Noiseurption," which is mostly Power Electronics) are perfectly crafted pieces of this new kind of Grindcore. The basic riffs, song structure and tempo are classic Grindcore: fast, brutal, crusty and reeking of Punk Rock attitude. But Noisear often break into burst of technical, hyper dissonant riffing that brings to mind Discordance Axis and Fuck the Facts at their most inhuman and enraged, and the band often toy with Jazzy and complex song structure, if only for a few fleeting seconds, before going back to the Grind with a furious vengeance. The vocal attack is also incredible: varied, pissed off an bubbling with pure shit spewing hatred, the alternating high shriek and low guttural growl is as impressive as any you will ever hear. This synthesis of two styles is incredibly fun to listen to, and kept me on my feet for the entire album, wondering what Noisear were going to throw at me next.

Tyranny of Decay does not lack for truly awesome moments. Defeatist are the more traditional of the two bands, and this 12 track LP does feel dirtier and crustier. Defeatist are not quite as technically sound as Noisear, but they heap the rage on by the truckload(and in the end, that might be the most important thing). At times very Doom-y, and occasionally bringing to mind a more primitive Immolation, Tyranny of Decay is a force of sheer destruction. Its technical moments are less pronounced, but when they hit, it often creates a sea of dissonance that would make Ulcerate proud. I also prefer the overall production of Tyranny of Decay: Subvert the Dominate Paradigm has a very even mix and a ridiculously perfect snare sound, but Tyranny of Decay feels nastier and more filthy in an early Rotten Sound kind of way. On the other hand, the fairly mono-tone, screamy vocals of Tyranny of Decay are not the album's strong suite.

If this is the future of Grindcore, then a bright future it shall be. Both of these albums, but particularly Subvert the Dominate Paradigm, represent an aesthetic synthesis that I wish other genres would at least attempt(I am looking at you, Death Metal), and continues to prove that for sheer unbridled creativity, Grindcore is the superior genre to just about any other form of Extreme Music. I love the proclamation of Subvert the Dominate Paradigm's title: Noisear(and Defeatist) have done exactly that: taken the dominate ideas in Grindcore today, undercut them, and then popped a squat and took a shit on them.